M. Giant'sVelcrometerThrowing stuff at the internet to see what sticks

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Snap, Crackle, Pop

Part of the reason for the new addition upstairs was that, in theory, we'd be able to leave M. Small up there for as long as ten minutes at a time. We'd close the doors to our bedroom and the upstairs bathroom, put a gate across the hallway to the top of the stairs, and let him shuttle back and forth freely between his bedroom and his playroom while we went about our business. That was the theory, anyway.

This morning, I was in the kitchen cleaning the floor while Trash was outside digging dandelions out of the front yard. I could hear M. Small running around up there, occasionally giggling or hollering something at the cats, and I had no reason to think that anything wasn't fine. That is, until I heard M. Small trot near the top of the stapes and holler down:

"Daddy? I made a mess!"

My blood ran cold.

Now, a two-and-a-half-year-old's definition of "mess" is at a much higher threshold that that of an adult. And if M. Small was making a special trip just to announce the creation of one, there was no way I would be dealing with just a few scattered toys here.

When I got upstairs, I wasn't disappointed:

The funny thing was, when I had first come downstairs that morning to make M. Small's breakfast, I had quietly wondered to myself what had happened to the bag of knock-off Rice Krispies that had been up in the cabinet with the rest of the cereal. But I neither thought nor said anything of it, instead filling his bowl from a box that was also open. And then I saw this:

And remembered that Trash had said something about them having a "picnic" upstairs the previous afternoon, and, well, mystery solved.

I opened the window in M. Small's playroom and yelled, "Trash? Get in here right now!"

Thinking it was some kind of emergency, she took off her gardening gloves, ran in, kicked off her shoes, and hurried upstairs.

"You should have told me this is all it was," she said when she saw. "I was outside with my gardening gloves, and I had my shoes on…"

"You wouldn't have come," I said.

"That's right," she agreed readily.

"I'm hungry," M. Small said, scooping the tops off of the nearest drifts of cereal and popping them into his mouth.

The three of us got it all cleaned up in a few minutes, although M. Small's part consisted mainly of emptying the dustpan into the trash can, with about a 65 percent accuracy rate. It wasn't really as bad as it could have been. I suppose instead of an open bag of dry cereal, it could have been strawberries or used motor oil or something.

In addition to shaking out his playroom rugs, dumping out every toy he owns that's capable of holding a single grain of crisped rice inside it, then sweeping the playroom and the hallway, we had to sweep the bedroom floor as well. It seems we'd forgotten to close that room off this time. We didn't quite get around to that last task before we got bored, so it'll have to wait for later.

Besides, all of the cereal on the floor in there is on her side of the bed.

9 Comments:

My 2-yr-old got ahold of peanut butter last week. I came downstairs to find her waving her arm with the jar on the end, like some sort of bizarre prosthetic. There was peanut butter on the TV screen, on the blanket that covers the sofa (for just this reason), on the toy chest, on the floor, on the entertainment armoire, etc. Cereal is no big.

Heh - nothing compared to the time a couple months ago when my 2-year-old daughter had spread the contents of her pull-up on her bedding, clothes, and hair instead of napping. All of a sudden, I hear over the baby monitor, "There's poopy in my hair....there's poopy in my bed..."

Ha, nothing compares to my feat of utter destruction when I was M. Small's age. My parents took me on a holiday to the sea. When they were busy unloading the car, I undressed, climbed into the bath tub and squeezed a WHOLE bottle of baby oil over my head. I was the incredible eel-man! Nothing would get a grip on me, not even after rincing with enough water to fill two swimming pools to the rim. Foam everywhere!

The best thing was that I normally would scream half the neigbourhood together when mummy or daddy tried to wash my hair.

My roommate's little gal topped herself last year when she woke up before both of us and proceeded to flush half a roll of toilet paper down the toilet AND cover the cat in Vaseline. That was a long day.

My cousin and I once decided to make a blizzard on my dollhouse... with a giant-sized bottle of baby powder. I also once decided to "help" my mom clean house, by polishing every doorknob with Chapstick.

Heh. It's amazing how much mess they can make without making a sound, isn't it. Mine was a 3-year-old I was babysitting and a brand new 1-pound jar of Vaseline. He even stood on the dresser to make sure he got maximum wall coverage.

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